Elon Musk provided an update on Neuralink, the brain-computer interface business he started back in 2016, at the end of August through a live webcast.
Maverick technologist Musk, who serves as the CEO of both the space exploration firm SpaceX and the cutting-edge electric car maker TeslaTSLA +3%, presented a visionary plan for the future of humanity.
In Elon Musk’s vision of the future, cybernetically enhanced super-humans would not only be able to defeat the scourge of disease and infirmity but will also completely transcend their physical form through integration with machines and technology.
Neuralink’s implantable gadget is, in Elon Musk’s words, “like a Fitbit in your skull.” The technology, which consists of incredibly thin threads carrying electrodes, aims to enable high throughput connection to external computers and, perhaps, secondary “links” inserted elsewhere in the body.
No doubt, Neuralink is no gimmick either. Over 100 people are now employed by the company, and it wants to grow quickly.
Additionally, Musk has invested $100 million of his own money on the project. Additionally, he disclosed that Neuralink was given the Breakthrough Device designation by the US Food and Drug Administration in July of last year, which might help to speed up the approval process.
Musk’s repeated statement that Neuralink would initially aim to “solve important brain and spine problems” is likely to have caught the attention of disabled individuals.
In fact, Neuralink was noted as having the ability to treat a number of chronic and terminal illnesses throughout the presentation, including blindness, spinal cord injuries, memory loss, brain damage, and even depression.
Patients with spinal cord injuries will be the main focus of the company’s initial set of clinical trials.
This may sound like an interesting story to those with disabilities who are listening, or at the very least, different from the professional publications’ dreary medical terminology and quantitative facts.
using the human brain to command AI
This is undoubtedly influenced by Musk’s multibillionaire status and media persona as a pioneering astronomer pushing the boundaries of science.
Perhaps more tantalizingly, it is patently evident that Musk’s goals for Neuralink go much beyond merely assisting those with disabilities.
Elon Musk has expressed his fears about the threat that artificial intelligence poses to humans on the record numerous times.
He believes that AI will one day surpass humans and become uncontrollable, and he has said that this technology poses a larger threat to human life than nuclear weapons.
In essence, Musk’s transhumanist desire to keep control over extremely intelligent machines and AI is what gave birth to Neuralink.
At the species level, Musk stated during the presentation, “it’s critical to understand how we coexist with advanced AI, achieving some AI symbiosis, such that the future of the world is controlled by the combined will of the people of the earth.” That could be the most significant accomplishment of a tool like this.
Despite the cyborgs’ impending ascendancy, there are more immediate business opportunities that can be taken advantage of.
In the end, who wouldn’t want to be able to stream music into their head or play virtual, immersive games entirely with their minds?
integrating disabilities into society
For people with physical disabilities, the technology is absolutely fascinating since it integrates with more general business or even existential purposes.
After all, neurological disorders including Parkinson’s, motor neuron disease, and multiple sclerosis are all extremely uncommon.
Yes, they are all brain-related, but their underlying causes and modes of operation are distinct from one another. In order to compete for limited resources, research for these illnesses is therefore highly specialized and progresses slowly within academic silos.
Any new technology suddenly becomes a very alluring prospect, especially one driven by larger, mass-market objectives and funding.
The scientific community’s opinion
At this point, it should be remembered that brain-machine interface (BMI) research began in the 1970s. Early demonstrations used patients moving an on-screen cursor while wearing external electrodes. Researchers have more recently used BMIs to actuate the movement of wheelchairs, miniature vehicles, and artificial arms.
Neurolink has so far gotten a mixed reaction from the neuroscience community in terms of how it has been received.
The company’s biggest innovation seems to be the number of electrodes used (10x more than any other device), which enables previously unheard-of quantities of data and throughput.
Neuralink’s hardware, in terms of size, portability, power consumption, and wireless capabilities, is “order of magnitude leaps” ahead of any rival, said University of Toronto neuroscience research fellow Graeme Moffat.
The release from Neuralink was called “tremendously exciting” and “a huge technical achievement” by Ralph Adolphs, the Bren Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Biology at California Institute of Technology.
Neuralink has also made advances in the creation of a surgical robot that enables the insertion of minute wires little larger than a human hair in diameter. The long-term goal is to perform the surgery as a minimally invasive day procedure, similar to how LASIK eye surgery is currently performed.
Neuralink’s theoretical foundation has drawn criticism from certain experts, especially when it comes to simulating higher-level brain operations like storing memories or thinking.
The naive conflating of ideas and memories with the electrical discharges that take place alongside them, according to Loren Frank, a neuroscientist at UCSF and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, indicates “a failure of knowledge of biology.”
Since there is no established scientific theory of human consciousness, this is not surprising.
Musk’s talk and Neuralink’s current state were summed up by Andrew Jackson, professor of neural interfaces at Newcastle University, as “solid engineering but mediocre neuroscience.”
Nevertheless, there is hope for those who are drawn to Neuralink for its potential in medicine.
Though it comes with many difficulties, mediating motor activities is unquestionably not as difficult a task as understanding thoughts and memories.
People with impairments will be primarily interested in the former, as stated by Steven Chase of Carnegie Mellon’s Neuroscience Institute: “The biggest thing these patients want is independence; this technology has the potential to offer them that.”
How the timeline appears
So, while there is hope that a commonplace device for regulating brain electrical signals could actually represent a new therapeutic area and approach for crippling neurological disorders, there is less clarity regarding the timing.
After all, this is the same Elon Musk who projected that by the end of 2020, there would be one million completely autonomous automobiles on the road.
Perhaps more than any other group in society, those who have long-term health issues are aware that progress in medicine is frequently slow and arduous.
For no other reason than the fact that it is inherently difficult, research is dispersed. One research team’s entire career can be devoted to understanding the mechanism of action of a single medicine, gene, or protein for a particular disease.
However, even for people who live with the most severe infirmities, the idea that a treatment or a solution might exist in the future remains the ultimate tantalizing taboo.
In the disability community, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to medical illnesses or how some people view their impairment as an essential part of who they are.
Many disabled people see the solution as just having the chance to live in a more accepting, diversified, and barrier-free society rather than something that needs to be “fixed” medically.
However, many people who have received a life-limiting neurological diagnosis later in life would probably jump at the chance to keep those priceless skills that many neurological diseases cruelly and gradually rob them of.
We’ve all been raised to think that technology advances and that ultimately doctors will discover a way to treat ailments that were previously incurable.
The question of when it will happen and which generation will be living to benefit is more important than whether it will happen.
In the end, “Generation Fixed” might not have existed yet, but those of us alive now might be witnessing the development of a technology that will, in the future, make the abolition of disabilities brought on by neurological disease more than just science fiction.
When Musk is old and decrepit, he may look back on his voyage to the secret frontier of the human brain and realize that it was more difficult than even exploring the stars and outer space.
